Published on 07 Apr 2025

How to prevent your son from being sucked into the 'manosphere'

The most dangerous place for a teenage boy is to be alone in his bedroom.

This statement has been ringing in my head since the airing of the fictional series Adolescence in March.

As a father who has raised two boys through their teenage years, this is naturally a topic which gravely concerns me.

The Netflix drama, which probes the angst of the family of a young teen boy accused of murder, clocked 24 million views in four days.

Shot using a one-take style, each episode follows the characters in real time as they attempt to get to the bottom of the incident.

In four episodes, the experiences of protagonist Jamie (played by Owen Cooper) of being bullied on social media and his self-radicalisation into toxic masculinity are explored.

Stephen Graham, who co-wrote the drama and starred in it, said he did the show because he felt that parents needed to be mindful of the external influences working insidiously on their children.

His inspiration for the series came from a spate of young boys in Britain stabbing young girls. It compelled him to explore what could lead them to do such horrible things.

Some of the most shocking lines in the series are about the "manosphere". The concept originated in the early 2000s to describe an online community focusing on masculine issues, gender and politics.

Among the popular topics discussed in the community are how to pick up women and seduce them, masculinity and aggressive anti-feminisim. The sentiment there is that men are discriminated against because of the runaway success of feminism in society today.

The manosphere contains substantial discussion of an "incel" culture, which is a shortening of the words "involuntary celibate", where men complain that they are unable to find romantic or sexual partners to satiate their desire for sex.

This leads to lines in the series like, "80 per cent of women are attracted to 20 per cent of men", which means that the only way you can achieve a sexual conquest is that "you must trick them because you cannot get them in the normal way".

While much is made of Graham, his co-writer of the series, Jack Thorne, shared with the media about where the blame lies. "Jamie is not a simple product of the 'manosphere'. He is a product of parents that didn't see, a school that couldn't care and a brain that didn't stop him."

Thorne adds that in writing the series, "I was shocked at how much of Jamie I had in me. His pain, his anger, contains sides of me I didn't want to see. He comes from a good background, like me. He's a bright boy, like I was. The key difference between us? He had the internet to read at night whereas I had Terry Pratchett and Judy Blume".

In my various roles in education, I spend quite a lot of time with young people between 16 and 29 years old. In my interactions with them, I have noticed an uptick in the usage of terms referenced in the show.

Teens would toss around the term "incel", in the same way "loser" has been used as a derogatory term. I suspect that it is symptomatic of aspects of the manosphere going mainstream.

So, what can parents of teens do to prevent them from being sucked into the manosphere?

Alone in their bedroom

If the most dangerous place for a teen boy is being alone in his bedroom scrolling on his mobile phone, don't leave him alone in that setting.

In our household, my wife and I expect our sons to use their devices in the common areas. We actively discourage them from using their devices alone in their room, especially before they go to sleep each night.

I would be lying to say we are always successful in our efforts to keep devices out of their bedroom, but on the whole, we have been successful far more often than we have failed.

Our logic is that scrolling on their devices just before sleep is scientifically proven to affect the quality of sleep.

Even though we have enough rooms in the home for our sons to have their own bedrooms, we chose to continue letting them share a room through their teen years.

Besides keeping each other company, having another person in the personal space of the bedroom has the additional benefit that they are never in the room alone with a device.

Communication

As our boys were growing up, we made it a point to establish platforms of communication with them and to check in regularly.

Family dinners were a good way to keep lines of communication open.

Our assumption was that the boys would be home for family dinner every night and they had to alert us in advance if they were not going to show up.

Dinner conversation would often revolve around what happened in each person's day and how each person was doing. Discussions about grades were taboo.

Making it a point to go on regular family holidays together also gave us opportunities to discuss topics that were more personal, and which needed more time and trust to unpack.

We have been fortunate that the boys have always prioritised these blocks of family time, even now when they are 23 and 20.

When I was growing up, I was always taught to address those whom I met around the neighbourhood as uncle or auntie.

We have continued this practice with our boys over the years. So, when our boys go out, they often address elders who are familiar to them as auntie or uncle.

This socialisation helps to remind them that they are part of the community and are never alone.

Physical affection

As our boys were growing up, we made it a point to touch them to express our love for them. A hug, a pat or an embrace since they were young babies, all the way through their teen years, and even now as young adults.

By touching them in an appropriate way, we were able to physically convey our love for them.

Everyone needs to be touched and loved. By touching our sons regularly to convey our affection for them, we were signalling to them that they did not need to resort to deception to have their needs for physical affection met.

What is at stake

In March 2024, a year before Adolescence was released, a Crown Court in the United Kingdom convicted British soldier Kyle Clifford of killing his former partner, her sister and her mother in a triple-revenge killing.

Prosecutors in the UK said that Clifford's actions, in response to being rejected by his partner, were fuelled by the "violent misogyny promoted" by controversial social media figures in the manosphere.

Rather than vilifying such figures, which adds to their infamy and notoriety, or call for a ban on social media use for teens, I think that there is an alternative solution to preventing our boys from being sucked into the manosphere.

While they are young, love them, communicate with them and please don't leave them alone in their bedrooms.

Source: The Straits Times